`Emerald` Dull Try At Wwii Film

The year is 1944. Most of Europe is occupied by the Germans, conditions along the eastern front have turned critical, and England has begun to mobilize.

The Nazis know an Allied force is being mounted to invade France from the English Channel, yet the date and location of the attack remain top secret.

Only a select group of special officers called ``overlords`` know the details of the D-day invasion, and the Germans have been unable to capture any of the coordinators and subject them to interrogation.

A mock exercise backfires when overlord Lt. Andy Wheeler (Eric Stoltz) is caught and sent to a Berlin prison. Wheeler is an American Army officer considered ``shy, introverted and brilliant,`` and a young man likely to crack under the Gestapo`s brutal treatment.

British Intelligence is frantic to get to Wheeler. They enlist Col. Gus Lang (Ed Harris), a double agent, to go to Germany and free the officer -- or prevent him from revealing the invasion plans. To the Germans, Lang is known under the code name ``Emerald.``

Despite a good cast, Code Name Emerald is a remarkably dull war film that delivers all the excitement of a Mission Impossible episode minus the technological gimmicks. It`s padded with a lot of on-location footage of Paris and its environs.

At the outset, the story`s trio of Nazi villains -- Gen. Hoffman (Horst Buchholz), SS officer Ernst Ritter (Helmut Berger) and Col. Brausch (Max von Sydow) -- are prepared for skulduggery. They must break Wheeler gently without physical torture (a bogus medical record says the officer has a delicate heart condition), but time is running out. So they invite Emerald to Germany and plant him in Wheeler`s cell. The two prisoners talk about baseball and Texas, while Emerald plays a game of cat and mouse to ferret out the information.

Harris literally sleepwalks through his role. Even a subplot romance with French underground agent Claire (Cyrielle Claire) does nothing to spark this lackluster tale. All that emerges is one boring scene after another, laden with meaningless talk that succeeds only at belaboring the obvious.

Von Sydow merely skulks through his role. Buchholz is potentially good as the general, though he is given little to do. Berger, however, grossly overacts as a rather effeminate and vicious Himmler disciple brimming with anti-Semitism and paranoia -- the stereotypical Nazi of all Nazis.

From Jonathan Sanger`s lifeless direction to a plodding story that simply goes nowhere, Code Name Emerald is a pathetic attempt at a wartime period piece. Jack Addison`s peculiar, New York jazz score seems totally out of place as well, and is not helped by dark lighting and grainy footage. The whole movie appears to have been shot through the bottom of a dirty beer stein.

Why the film was made is the big question. Code Name Emerald is not simply an anachronism on today`s movie marquee; it`s a full-blown postmortem for World War II dramas.